Sunday, May 13, 2007

IPTV, set-top boxes and the future

at&t badly miscalculated the costs and time and problems of rolling out U-verse TV. It is Fiber-to-the-Node (fttn) and VDSL at about 25MB to the end user. The number of homes to be passed by this year and the cost have changed - number of homes is less, cost is more - and Wall Street thinks that FTTN won't be enough, especially for the billions spent. VZ is using FTTH with its FiOS service and is not getting much traction.
Meanwhile Joost launched with P2P Video via a browser. And there are many other video services on the web, like YouTube and Babelgum. Many networks have their shows on iTunes or their own website for viewing or downloading. HP is working to move all episodes and movies to digital. So is Wal-Mart, Amazon, Blockbuster, and Netflix. So too are the Big 5 cablecos.
The set-top box is a useless monster. Eventually you will just connect your PC to the TV set.
Where does that leave telcos and DBS? The Converged Living Room is coming as LCD TV's drop in price.